Why you should never order diet coke with your cheeseburger
Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: Why you should never order diet cola with your cheeseburger.
Scientists were shocked: the combination of sweeteners with carbohydrates has significant effects on your metabolism. Did you think you were doing well with a diet cola with your burger or a diet iced tea with the bitterballen? Neuropsychologist Dana Small: ‘The best alternative? A glass of water.’
A shocking research result: when you combine the sweetener sucralose with carbohydrates, something significant changes in your metabolism. This was discovered by neuropsychologist Dana Small during her research on fast food at Yale University.
Carbohydrate in the mix
So it's about the combination of sucralose and carbohydrates. Sucralose is found in diet soft drinks, such as Diet Pepsi and Coca Cola Light. And you almost never drink such a soft drink alone; it comes with food. Moreover, the sweetener is also found in candy, cookies, or chips, exactly in such a mix with carbohydrates. And that combination is not good, the researchers discovered. It causes lasting changes in metabolism. ‘It changes the part of your brain that regulates how food is processed in your body,’ says Small. ‘And that change is permanent, so not just when you drink the diet soft drink with fries or eat the diet snack.’
From perfectly healthy to almost diabetic
The results were so impressive that Small halted part of her research. She noticed that a few test subjects changed from completely healthy to pre-diabetic in just two weeks. Detail: the research only looks at one type of artificial sweetener, namely sucralose. There are many more sugar substitutes such as aspartame and saccharin. So there is still nothing to say about the influence of those sweeteners in combination with carbs on your metabolism.
Reversing?
The research continues, mainly to find out how these changes occur and how they can be reversed. But Small already draws the conclusion: no sucralose with carbohydrates. In theory, it would be better to drink diet soft drinks without food, but then you also shouldn't eat something with carbohydrates shortly after. Replacing regular soft drinks with diet soft drinks is therefore not such a good idea. The scientists advise: just have a glass of water.
